


What's In A Name?

by HereComeDatBoi



Series: you're the one that's making me strong [12]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Children, Domestic Bliss, Earth Dad Adam (Voltron), Fluff, Humor, M/M, Married Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Married Life, Parenthood, Space Dad Shiro (Voltron), four - Freeform, they are soft, with their four Earth babies, yes you read that right lads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-26 17:54:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19010887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HereComeDatBoi/pseuds/HereComeDatBoi
Summary: “How do you even say things like that?” sobbed his husband, burying his face in Shiro’s blue nightshirt and crying aloud as Shiro pressed his lips to the top of Adam’s head. “We’ve been married ten years, how do you―I don’t even―do you not have any mercy? You’re going to melt me into a pile of mush one day, Takashi, and I’m not going to be responsible for damages.”“Damages: one Takashi Shirogane’s heart,” Shiro murmured, peppering kisses over Adam’s soft brown hair. “Shot through by Adam Ahluwalia in the September of 2128. Location of crime: hallway Q-7 at the Arizona Galaxy Garrison. Suspect believed to be still at large, probably somewhere in India, walking free after stealing the heart of an innocent gay fifteen-year-old.”Adam giggled. “You stole his heart too, so it was only fair.”-----Parenthood isn't always straightforward, but Adam and Shiro have it pretty well figured-out.Until now.





	What's In A Name?

**Author's Note:**

> *rolls in late 4 weeks late with a milkshake*
> 
> sup y'all
> 
> *skates away*
> 
> Brief note: This can be read independently, but here's a brief description of the setting. Shiro and Adam have been married for ten years, and have four daughters: Sonia, Himeko, Amla, and Yasuko. They currently live at Adam's family estate in western India, but go back every few months to visit the rest of the squad at the Garrison.

“And what did the princess do then, tou-chan?”

“She grabbed the brave paladin’s ear and forced him to his knees,” laughed Shiro, adjusting the sleeping baby in his arms as his two elder daughters put their heads on his shoulder. “And then she found out she’d been sleeping for ten thousand years, so she was sad for a while. Her tou-chan died while she was in the pod, you know, and the only friend she had left was her advisor. But he loved her like his own daughter, so she wasn’t alone.”

“She had the paladins, too!” cried Himeko, grabbing the neck of Sonia’s t-shirt and shaking her. “She had tou-chan, an’ Uncle Keith, an’ Pidgey, and―”

“Hime-chan,” Sonia groaned, wrapping her younger sister in a blanket to keep her still. “That hurts! Don’t jump around so much.”

“But it’s _inciting_ ,” protested the little girl. “Aunty ‘Lura’s a real life princess, and she and tou-chan went on adventures! I _haves_ to jump.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Do so.”

“ _Soniye_ , Hime-chan,” came a soft chiding voice from the door, followed by Adam himself stepping lightly over the threshold with another snoozing bundle tucked against his chest. Sonia and Himeko quieted down at the sight of him, giggling under the covers as Adam bent down to kiss Shiro’s forehead and put Amla into his lap next to Yasuko. “You two should have been in bed by now, _janaana._ It’s a school day tomorrow.”

“Uncle Lancey said Monday was canceled,” Himeko chirped, looking up at Adam with wide brown eyes shaped exactly like Shiro’s. “So there’s no school, Papa.”

“Well, tomorrow isn’t Monday,” Shiro reminded her. “It’s a short week, so Monday was yesterday. And your papa’s right, Hime-chan. It’s the first day of a new school year, so you and _soniye_ need your rest to study and play with your friends, right?”

“I’m only going to preschool. Kazha said you don’t study at all in preschool.”

“But you’ll be too tired to run around with everyone else if you don’t sleep now,” said Adam, lifting the four-year-old into his arms and carrying her down the hallway with Sonia bouncing along behind him. “And your onee-chan needs to rest, too. The sheets are all nice and warm, and all your pillows have the princess covers on. Do you want anything else, moonbeam?”

“No, we―”

“Cookie?”

“You can’t have cookies, Hime-chan!” scolded Sonia, tickling Himeko until she broke into a fit of burbling laughter. “You ate three after dinner!”

“Well, it’s a special day tomorrow, so you can both have a cookie with breakfast in the morning if you get up on time.”

“I want lemon!”

“I want lemon too, Papa! Unless there’s only one left. Then Hime-chan can have it.”

“There’s enough for both of you. Now _sone jao, beti_ ,” Adam whispered, kissing each little nose before blowing the lamp out and tiptoeing back to the master bedroom. “Did you eat the last lemon cookie, Takashi?”

“Uh,” stammered Shiro, who was still sitting against the headboard with Amla and Yasuko sleeping in his lap. “Maybe?”

“That’s okay, love. I was going to finish off the last of the bread dough before going to bed, anyway.” He sat down on the coverlet at Shiro’s right and covered his brow with kisses, pulling away only after Shiro bent closer and captured Adam’s lips with his own. “I won’t have time to bake anything tomorrow, so I might as well get the cookies done now, too. Can you carry the basket out into the living room, moonlight? I don’t want to leave the twins alone.”

A few minutes later both of them were busy in the kitchen, looking over at their baby daughters now and then while they kneaded bread dough and buttered cookie sheets (Adam) and stir-fried tofu with vegetables for the girls’ lunchboxes (Shiro). Once the bread and cookies were shut in the oven Adam went to sit on the couch, leaving Shiro to rinse a few cups of rice as he picked up his datapad and started going through the notifications.

“Oh! Look, sweetheart,” he smiled, turning the tablet in Shiro’s direction. “Keith sent a picture of Lance and Mari. Mari’s got another tooth, he says, and Kara’s learning to read.”

“I can’t believe Keith’s actually a big brother. It was easier to wrap my head around him marrying Lance and then just coming home with a Galra baby one day―how did he cope better with marriage and fatherhood than with holding his little sister?”

“Krolia and Kolivan planned Kara, that’s why,” said Adam dryly. “Keith’s good at dealing with unexpected situations because they don’t give him time to stress. But he had around six months to panic between finding out Kara was on the way and meeting her, so it’s no wonder Castle Kogane was a disaster for a while.”

“Not to mention the Garrison house. I think he wore a path through the carpet.”

“Well, he wasn’t as bad as Matt and Sam were when Katie―oh, not again.”

“What?”

“The school forms got mixed up in the new processing queue, and now the admin wants us to redo them all.”

“Do you want me to finish them, sunshine?”

“I’ll take care of it, love. You know reading off screens strains your eyes,” sighed Adam, pushing the bridge of his glasses further up his nose. “And I did them the first time, so I’ll be done faster.”

Shiro set his prosthetic hand to the scrub mode (courtesy of Pidge and Matt, as usual) and washed four cups of rice, leaving enough for the _yakimeshi_ he planned to make for dinner the next day. The dim light from the tablet flickered on his brushed-steel forearm as Adam went through the girls’ documents, pausing now and then to check that the twins were still soundly asleep.

"Himeko Shirogane," he murmured, fingers flying so quickly across the screen that Shiro was reminded of how Pidge used to type during the war. "Date of birth 06/30/2148, class section twelve...Sonia Shirogane, born 11/14/2144, class section twenty-three..."

 _Amla Shirogane_ , whispered a voice in the back of Shiro's mind, as if determined not to leave the list unfinished. _Yasuko Shirog―_

His hands froze in the pot of cold water as he turned to the twins’ little basket, watching Yasuko's tiny brown fist fluttering back and forth like a curious bird. Her name seemed to echo on the kitchen tiles as if he had spoken aloud, and as he thought back to the day she and Amla were born Shiro understood why. There was nothing in Yasuko’s name that spoke of the heart that had borne her, nothing of the other half of her blood―nothing, in fact, of the country and the people whose language she would grow up speaking, nothing of her dark skin and high-bridged nose, nothing of the man whose peerless love kept Shiro among the living.

_Himeko, too. Himeko too, I didn't even ask before we..._

"Sweetheart?" he ventured at last, looking up over the counter and meeting Adam's eyes. "Adam, love, do...do you wish we'd given the kids different names?"

"What?" said Adam blankly, apparently halfway through filling out one of Sonia's emergency forms. "Different names? Why?"

"Well, they've all got my surname," he croaked. "A Japanese surname, I mean. Sonia and Amla have Sanskrit names, but there's nothing in Himeko's name or Yasuko's to show that they're half you, it―it isn't fair. You gave birth to them, brought them to life with your own body and heart, and I didn't honor that. I didn't honor the family they're growing up with, or the country they call home, or―"

"What brought this on?" Adam interrupted, frowning. "Did my uncle say something? Or my grandfather?"

"No, it just occurred to me, right now. Why didn't you say anything when they were born?" begged Shiro. "You can't have been okay with that. And don't say that it’s fine because women are okay with it, because most women don't even think passing on their own names is an option when they’re married."

"It...wasn't because of that, _makhnaa_ ," said Adam, closing his datapad. "Come sit here, moonlight, and I'll try to explain."

“You did it to make me happy, didn’t you?”

“Takashi, _jaan-e-jaan,_ I―”

“Didn’t you?”

“Yes and no,” Adam sighed at last. He patted the space beside him and tugged Shiro down on the sofa, taking his hands and studying them as if they held the secrets of the universe.

“Do you remember the promise you made on the first day of our honeymoon?”

“Of course,” smiled Shiro, pressing Adam’s fingers to his lips and delighting in the soft pink blush that crossed his husband’s cheek. “You told me you were all right with going on like we used to be, with you away from home and staying with me at the Garrison...with waiting for me while I traveled the universe, or coming on missions with me if that’s what I wanted. And then I said that you gave up enough for my sake before the war, and promised to stay here, with you.”

Adam’s face fell like a stone, and Shiro felt his heart go cold.

“Do you not want that anymore, sunshine? Did I do something to―”

“No!” came the answer, followed by a frantic kiss as Adam leaned up and pressed their foreheads together. “Never, sweetheart. Never. It―Takashi, it makes me so happy, to wake up here in this house with you, I―I don’t want anything but what we’ve got, okay?”

“But what does that have to do with you not wanting to give the babies your name?”

“I’m _getting_ there, darling.” Adam pinched the bridge of his nose. “You said their names don’t make it clear they’re half me, but _I’m_ not raising them to honor the fact that they’re half you.”

“...Come again?”

“Their names are the only connection they’ve got to your side at all. I can’t speak Japanese to them, Takashi. Amla and Yasu-chan are going to grow up speaking Hindi and Urdu and knowing maybe two or three kanji, just like Himeko, and I can’t do anything to change that. All I could do was give them your name, and I thought it would be enough, but it’s _not_.”

“ _Janu,_ that’s not your job,” soothed Shiro, pulling Adam’s hands close to his chest. “Your job is to teach them about _your_ side, because it’s what you know. It’s my job to teach them how to read and write and share my background with them, and I haven’t done it because I _can’t_ . Sonia speaks better _nihongo_ than I do, for heaven’s sake. My grandparents were born in Florida, and they didn’t teach me much before I got to the Garrison, either. You’re comparing what you’re teaching the babies as someone who grew up here in Shindola to what I’m teaching them from my four years living in Kyoto before I started school, and that’s not a fair comparison.”

He paused. “Is that really the only reason?”

Adam glanced down into his lap and said nothing.

“Sweetheart, _please_.”

Silence.

“ _Adam―_ ”

“They don’t look like you, okay?” cried his husband, glaring at the fireplace with his eyebrows drawn close together like a pair of frustrated caterpillars. “I still haven’t forgotten that time you went to get Sonia from the nursery school and the staff went back to check her file before they let her go with you. I know they were just trying to keep her safe, but if it were me nobody would’ve given a _damn_ because Soniye and I are practically identical. I couldn’t give Hime-chan and the babies my name after that, I couldn’t. And it’s m―”

“If you were going to say _your fault_ I’m going to go outside and just sit there for a while,” Shiro sighed. “What do you think is your fault, exactly? Giving us a home and four beautiful children? Giving me the chance to be a dad after my dystrophy and the war stole it from me twice over?”

“It’s because of my weird Altean genes, so it is my fault,” said Adam miserably. “Coran told me that Altean children express only the better copy of every gene, and since your DNA is completely human my genes were mostly the default for all the babies but Himeko.”

“Look, love. Even if it wasn’t because of that, children don’t take after their parents fifty-fifty. But you only notice when the parents look completely different, like you and me. Or Keith’s dad and Krolia, even. Forget the girls looking just like you, Keith’s mom is a completely different species and you can’t even tell except when he and Lance are fighting and his eyes go yellow.”

“But he and Lance never fight.”

Shiro smiled. “Exactly my point, darling. Though I did see his eyes change color when Kazha fell into one of the laundry chutes on the Atlas.”

“Well, I know, but…”

"And it doesn’t matter anyway, love. I'd have wanted a child of yours even if it wasn't mine."

"Wh―what do you mean?"

"I mean that I'd lay down my life to protect anything that was part of you. There's nothing I wouldn't give for the sake of a child you fathered, even if you didn't know it existed. But for a child you brought into the world yourself, _our_ child, even though everyone from the admiral down to Katie was telling you it was killing you, I―"

Shiro paused and took in a breath, tightening his grasp on Adam's hand until his knuckles went pale.

"They're the breath in my body, sweetheart," he whispered. "The best of me, my everything. Even if Himeko's the only one who looks like me, even if only Sonia knows how to speak Japanese. And they'll always be the best of me, even if they're nothing like me―because, _janaana_ , they're your living image, your finest creations, and the best of me is you."

For a moment, he wondered if he had said something wrong. Adam’s eyes were bright and full of tears, dripping steadily onto the screen of his tablet as he lifted his shaking fingers to Shiro’s shoulders.

“How do you even _say_ things like that?” sobbed his husband, burying his face in Shiro’s blue nightshirt and crying aloud as Shiro pressed his lips to the top of Adam’s head. “We’ve been married ten years, how do you―I don’t even―do you not have any mercy? You’re going to melt me into a pile of mush one day, Takashi, and I’m not going to be responsible for damages.”

“Damages: one Takashi Shirogane’s heart,” Shiro murmured, peppering kisses over Adam’s soft brown hair. “Shot through by Adam Ahluwalia in the September of 2128. Location of crime: hallway Q-7 at the Arizona Galaxy Garrison. Suspect believed to be still at large, probably somewhere in India, walking free after stealing the heart of an innocent gay fifteen-year-old.”

Adam giggled. “You stole his heart too, so it was only fair.”

“A heart for a heart, then?”

“You got it, honey.” Their lips were a hairsbreadth apart now, the wind mingling between their throats until Adam leaned forward and closed the gap with a sigh.

They kissed until Amla broke the sweet stillness with a yawn, stretching her tiny arms up over her head and curling into her soft pink blankets like a duckling safe in the warmth of its mother’s down. Adam laughed at the sight of her, bending down to lift the twins into his arms as Shiro picked up the basket and put his arm around Adam’s waist.

“ _Wakatta, wakatta_ ,” he smiled, brushing a thumb over each tiny nose and earning himself a second small yawn from Yasuko. “Time for bed, baby beans. I’m sorry we made you wait so long, but we’re here now. We’re here.”

  


**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on Tumblr/Twitter at @datboicomehere!!!


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